Yep... they are worth at least 10,000 hp. All kidding aside it’s a remote possibility that there could be some atomization increase and help mileage minutely. But they are also blocking cfm...
Only in advertisements and NO... There are / were / have been several of these "swirl" design plates. ALL are useless. Why, well...while the fuel/air "MAY" swirl/spin/rotate while it is traveling in a single direction. AS SOON as it changes direction in the runners, ALL "swirl" stops. So...what does it actually do...nothing. I don't even think I'd give that space on my garage wall..! Mike
Worked with a guy who saw us installing turbulators on a 4" casing string we ran and cemented on a well we drilled back in 2002. He decided he had to have one in the air cleaner on his 350 equipped &lazer, so he whittled out a couple plates for the top and bottom of one, and put it on the air cleaner stud, with 2 filters stacked to give it enough room to fit. He was convinced it gave him more power, and better mileage. We still call him "Turbo Roy" to this day, bear in mind that he showed us one more reason to not use drugs. A 4 inch turbulator is a 4 1/8" id piece of pipe about 3 inches long, with 4 fins welded onto it at an angle, so it will spin, as fluid, in this case cement, is pumped past. We always wondered if enough air actually flowed through the air cleaner to make it rotate, Roy was convinced it did. The upside to his version was the fact that no parts were small enough to pass through the carb and into the engine.
My Dad saw those in the magazine ads back then and set about making his own. He used 1/8” aluminum sheet and for some he cut out and shaped stationary “blades” to rotate the passing mixture and for the others he made rotating blades spinning on a modified rivet. I think he made four different types of them for his ‘56 Plymouth with a 277 and a two barrel. He never said if they worked or not though he did keep careful records of his mileage. Three of them were in his retirement workshop in Searchlight, Nevada for years but disappeared when my sister and brother-in-law cleaned it out after he died. I assume one was still on the old Plymouth when he sold it. I wish I would have thought to grab them, they would have looked great on my shop wall. He also experimented with alcohol/water injection, cool cans for the gas line and misters for the radiator. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Stuff like that built by a family member or a friend, yea, that should have a place on the garage wall. Mike
Yep, saw one on a guy's car. He tached it up to 9 grand and the blades spun so fast it launched the carb through the snorkel scoop. Probably still in orbit.
The Jalopy Journal
